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I don't understand why SPDY / HTTP 2.0 is being framed as "fitting the needs of a few major players". Google is not the only one who benefits from reduced late

I don't understand why SPDY / HTTP 2.0 is being framed as "fitting the needs of a few major players". Google is not the only one who benefits from reduced latency, fast page loads, efficient use of SSL sessions, and server pushed resources. If anything, the people who benefit the most are those who _can't_ afford massive forward deployed CDN networks, large servers, and fat network pipes.

zzzcpan 13y ago
Google can afford to dedicate a bunch of engineers just to deal with all these complexities and inconveniences of binary protocols, but others can't. And this is far more important than some hypothetical tiny improvements in performance.
- cmccabe 13y ago
  Yeah. It's too bad there aren't free web servers out there that everyone can use that implement these protocols. Oh wait, there are. By making things more efficient, HTTP 2.0 is really going to make startups spend more money. Oh wait, no, the opposite thing.
  - zzzcpan 13y ago
    These web servers aren't that useful for everyone, some of us have to write our own. EDIT: It's not the matter of implementation anyways, it's that something important only for Google is proposed as a standard for everyone, which is insane.
    - cmccabe 13y ago
      What startups do you know that are writing their own web servers? More efficient web servers will, if anything, be even better for startups than they are for Google, since they lower the barrier to entry.
josteink 13y ago
The mind-bending complexity of the proposed HTTP 2.0 does very little to gain the little guy, or a young generation exploring the web: in fact it shuts them out. If the internet should have taught us one thing so far, it is that it's the open technologies which are built to be easy to understand and explore for humans which have driven the net forward. HTTP 2.0 is massive step backwards in that respect, and the only thing we're getting in return is slightly shorted response times. You know what? We can deal. We're getting better and better bandwith. We're getting more and more computing power. A few milliseconds doesn't hurt anyone. Let's not create a shit protocol violating everything the internet was built on, just because we're all of a sudden feeling resource-constrained. Now, of all times. rolls eyes
- bittired 13y ago
  HTTP 2.0 is going to happen whether we complain about it here or not. While we can certainly wait and see whether people will balk and make changes, the only true way to stop it is to replace it. If you can write a better set of protocols that meet the requirements, do it. If you can't then work with or support those that will.
  - gaadd33 13y ago
    Like IPv6? Its taken more than 10 years to approach 1% traffic share. Perhaps HTTP 2.0 will happen but I wouldn't bet money on it being everywhere anytime soon.
    - lstamour 13y ago
      I can't switch to IPv6 by downloading a browser. I could switch today to SPDY. In fact, it's got 55% market share including IE 11: http://caniuse.com/spdy http://caniuse.com/spdy
    - vidarh 13y ago
      Consider that until people start being told "no, you can't get more IP v4 addresses" or some services are unavailable via IPv4, the incentive to switch to IPv6 is quite low. We have IPv6 connectivity from our colo provider in one location, and a tunnel to our office, but two years in we're still only testing it for this reason - there's never enough time, and it's not yet urgent enough.
weland 13y ago
> If anything, the people who benefit the most are those who _can't_ afford massive forward deployed CDN networks, large servers, and fat network pipes. You win some, you lose some. The benefit of cutting down on some infrastructure should be weighed against the mind-boggling complexity of HTTP 2.0 and the added difficulty in debugging.
alayne 13y ago
For Google, a .0001% reduction in user overhead may translate to millions of dollars of resource savings. Google is willing to do crazy things like run their own modified Linux kernel that most companies wouldn't bother with. What is the end-user benefit in performance using HTTP 2.0? The only analysis of SPDY I saw indicated low single digit percentage benefit vs HTTPS. Whoop-dee-do. http://www.guypo.com/technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/ http://www.guypo.com/technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/
- lstamour 13y ago
  It's funny, isn't it? We gave out more domains to speed things up, but now it slows us down (referring to your link). I would highlight that HTTP 2 > SPDY as far as standards go, and the "beta" protocol of SPDY is already at 55% market share including IE 11: http://caniuse.com/spdy http://caniuse.com/spdy For those who are interested in speed optimization for 2013 and beyond, plus why SPDY's faster-than-SSL descendants are crucial to the web's success, have a look at http://www.igvita.com/slides/2013/breaking-1s-mobile-barrier.pdf http://www.igvita.com/slides/2013/breaking-1s-mobile-barrier... -- I believe there's a video out there too somewhere. Edit: Video link is on first page of the slides. What's interesting too is that this talk focuses as much on what's achievable without SPDY as what might be with, down the road. We really need faster SSL negotiation for that first time connection cost.
hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
I see the proposals of binary protocols, push content, etc. as symptoms of a deeper issue. Different than the spirit of HTTP, those protocols have little to do with publishing content anymore. They are just more kludges, in the history of kludges, to patch browsers into application platforms. That mainly benefits the big web monopolists, who require the browser to be the ultimate application platform, where they can track to their hearts content, display unsolicited advertising, and basically extort business to advertise on their channels to remain relevant on the web. Not quite the idea of "information repository" that spawned the web in the first place.
- lstamour 13y ago
  Right. Because the alternative, bloated pages out the wazoo makes so much more sense than having smarter Apache and Nginx servers who will do all this for you. Remember, most of the web will be connected by cell phones, we need better protocols for that.
  - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
    Did you read the comment or just skimmed? I don't question the technical merits, but the underlying motivations, which I believe are fatally flawed.
    - lstamour 13y ago
      Read. That's why I mentioned Apache and Nginx, since the Google SPDY team has focused on making sure that there are plugins for each, plus CloudFront support, so that it can be applied "to the little guys". And in turn, I would ask you: Have you not used Web Sockets? How about HTML5 Web Components? New JS functionality? As "hackers", I would expect more excitement than this -- since you're going to enable a whole new generation of low latency cell phone apps, OSes based on web browsers and apps for them (e.g. Win8.1, ChromeOS and Webkit) and do so in a very standards-based way, rather than ad-hoc distributing SPDY through your proprietary browser. Short of security flaws like SSL's header compression, what could go wrong? :)
    - 13y ago

zzzcpan 13y ago

Google can afford to dedicate a bunch of engineers just to deal with all these complexities and inconveniences of binary protocols, but others can't. And this is far more important than some hypothetical tiny improvements in performance.

cmccabe 13y ago
Yeah. It's too bad there aren't free web servers out there that everyone can use that implement these protocols. Oh wait, there are. By making things more efficient, HTTP 2.0 is really going to make startups spend more money. Oh wait, no, the opposite thing.
- zzzcpan 13y ago
  These web servers aren't that useful for everyone, some of us have to write our own. EDIT: It's not the matter of implementation anyways, it's that something important only for Google is proposed as a standard for everyone, which is insane.
  - cmccabe 13y ago
    What startups do you know that are writing their own web servers? More efficient web servers will, if anything, be even better for startups than they are for Google, since they lower the barrier to entry.

josteink 13y ago

The mind-bending complexity of the proposed HTTP 2.0 does very little to gain the little guy, or a young generation exploring the web: in fact it shuts them out. If the internet should have taught us one thing so far, it is that it's the open technologies which are built to be easy to understand and explore for humans which have driven the net forward. HTTP 2.0 is massive step backwards in that respect, and the only thing we're getting in return is slightly shorted response times. You know what? We can deal. We're getting better and better bandwith. We're getting more and more computing power. A few milliseconds doesn't hurt anyone. Let's not create a shit protocol violating everything the internet was built on, just because we're all of a sudden feeling resource-constrained. Now, of all times. rolls eyes

bittired 13y ago
HTTP 2.0 is going to happen whether we complain about it here or not. While we can certainly wait and see whether people will balk and make changes, the only true way to stop it is to replace it. If you can write a better set of protocols that meet the requirements, do it. If you can't then work with or support those that will.
- gaadd33 13y ago
  Like IPv6? Its taken more than 10 years to approach 1% traffic share. Perhaps HTTP 2.0 will happen but I wouldn't bet money on it being everywhere anytime soon.
  - lstamour 13y ago
    I can't switch to IPv6 by downloading a browser. I could switch today to SPDY. In fact, it's got 55% market share including IE 11: http://caniuse.com/spdy http://caniuse.com/spdy
  - vidarh 13y ago
    Consider that until people start being told "no, you can't get more IP v4 addresses" or some services are unavailable via IPv4, the incentive to switch to IPv6 is quite low. We have IPv6 connectivity from our colo provider in one location, and a tunnel to our office, but two years in we're still only testing it for this reason - there's never enough time, and it's not yet urgent enough.

weland 13y ago

> If anything, the people who benefit the most are those who _can't_ afford massive forward deployed CDN networks, large servers, and fat network pipes. You win some, you lose some. The benefit of cutting down on some infrastructure should be weighed against the mind-boggling complexity of HTTP 2.0 and the added difficulty in debugging.

alayne 13y ago

For Google, a .0001% reduction in user overhead may translate to millions of dollars of resource savings. Google is willing to do crazy things like run their own modified Linux kernel that most companies wouldn't bother with. What is the end-user benefit in performance using HTTP 2.0? The only analysis of SPDY I saw indicated low single digit percentage benefit vs HTTPS. Whoop-dee-do. http://www.guypo.com/technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/ http://www.guypo.com/technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/

lstamour 13y ago
It's funny, isn't it? We gave out more domains to speed things up, but now it slows us down (referring to your link). I would highlight that HTTP 2 > SPDY as far as standards go, and the "beta" protocol of SPDY is already at 55% market share including IE 11: http://caniuse.com/spdy http://caniuse.com/spdy For those who are interested in speed optimization for 2013 and beyond, plus why SPDY's faster-than-SSL descendants are crucial to the web's success, have a look at http://www.igvita.com/slides/2013/breaking-1s-mobile-barrier.pdf http://www.igvita.com/slides/2013/breaking-1s-mobile-barrier... -- I believe there's a video out there too somewhere. Edit: Video link is on first page of the slides. What's interesting too is that this talk focuses as much on what's achievable without SPDY as what might be with, down the road. We really need faster SSL negotiation for that first time connection cost.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago

I see the proposals of binary protocols, push content, etc. as symptoms of a deeper issue. Different than the spirit of HTTP, those protocols have little to do with publishing content anymore. They are just more kludges, in the history of kludges, to patch browsers into application platforms. That mainly benefits the big web monopolists, who require the browser to be the ultimate application platform, where they can track to their hearts content, display unsolicited advertising, and basically extort business to advertise on their channels to remain relevant on the web. Not quite the idea of "information repository" that spawned the web in the first place.

lstamour 13y ago
Right. Because the alternative, bloated pages out the wazoo makes so much more sense than having smarter Apache and Nginx servers who will do all this for you. Remember, most of the web will be connected by cell phones, we need better protocols for that.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  Did you read the comment or just skimmed? I don't question the technical merits, but the underlying motivations, which I believe are fatally flawed.
  - lstamour 13y ago
    Read. That's why I mentioned Apache and Nginx, since the Google SPDY team has focused on making sure that there are plugins for each, plus CloudFront support, so that it can be applied "to the little guys". And in turn, I would ask you: Have you not used Web Sockets? How about HTML5 Web Components? New JS functionality? As "hackers", I would expect more excitement than this -- since you're going to enable a whole new generation of low latency cell phone apps, OSes based on web browsers and apps for them (e.g. Win8.1, ChromeOS and Webkit) and do so in a very standards-based way, rather than ad-hoc distributing SPDY through your proprietary browser. Short of security flaws like SSL's header compression, what could go wrong? :)
  - 13y ago